Rakes, Live Deaths and Modied Cassette Players: Three Contemporary Sound Artists from Colombia

Ricardo Arias
ABSTRACT

Sound art activity in

As both a term and a practice, sound art has become increasingly prominent since the late 1990s. The label has been embraced by artists, curators and critics, and the number of museum and gallery exhibits dedicated to (or prominently featuring) sound art has grown exponentially in recent years. While showcasing a new generation of audio artists, many of these exhibitions have also traced a genealogy of sound art that stretches back to the emergence of the art form in the 1960s and have thus given the current boom an historical footing. Christoph Cox [1] The span of years since the dawn of the new millennium has witnessed a remarkable increase in shows, exhibitions and programmes devoted to a hybrid, elusive and not-too-clear form of creative expression which has come to be known as sound art. Daniela Cascella [2] As Cascella observes in the above epigraph, sound art indeed seems to be blossoming worldwide in the new millennium. Critical and scholarly attention to this artistic practice and, more broadly, to sound as an object of study, are also proliferating [3]. In trying to understand this burst of activity in sound art, it is imperative to start broadening our eld of vision to include what is being done beyond Europe, North America and Japan in order to have a truly global perspective on the issue [4]. It is my intent with this paper to contribute in this respect by giving a glimpse of what is being done in my current place of residence, Colombia.

lation and sculpture [7]. A second group of sound artists, active in the Colombian art scene today, that began working in the 1990s, such as Ana Mara Romano, Rodrigo Restrepo and Daniel Prieto, have been able to move more swiftly between categories. The generation of those who became active in the new millennium, such as David Vlez, Leonel Vsquez, caro Zorbar, Juan Sebastin Suanca and Carlos Bonil, does not seem to be troubled by being perceived as sound artists. They simply embrace sound as another material at their disposal to realize their artistic projects. This gradual shift in terminology from musicbe it experimental, electronic or electroacoustictoward sound art that has occurred in the last 2 decades echoes the opposition between music and noise that Christoph Cox puts forth in developing an ontology of sound [8]. This agreement between practice and theoretical discourse suggests that we may indeed be experiencing a signicant paradigm shift in our awareness and use of sound. This predicament leads us to think that at this point in the history of Western Culture, an art practice with sound, sound art, that is different from music is indeed coming into its own and may need to rely no longer on existing categories and traditions but on a renewed appraisal of sound itself to justify its existence.

Colombia has proliferated in the last decade, as evidenced by the considerable number of shows focusing on sound works by Colombian artists in recent years. The author presents three artistsRodrigo Restrepo, Leonel Vsquez and caro Zorbareach of whom represents a distinct point in the continuum between music and sound art. The artists individual and distinct approaches to the use of technology and their very personal conceptions of space and time are discussed.

SOUND ART PRaCTICE IN COLOMBIa

Sound art activity in Colombia has abounded in the last decade, as evidenced by the considerable number of shows focusing on sound works by Colombian artists in recent years [5]. Some of the artists involved in these shows, such as Roberto Garca, Juan Reyes, Mauricio Bejarano, Alba Fernanda Triana and I, have been working with sound for quite some time, and while our work has been categorized as experimental or electroacoustic music, we are now considered to be sound artists [6]. Such rebranding has had an effect on the work and on the way the artists view it, prompting exploration of areas entered only occasionally in the past, such as sound instalRicardo Arias (composer, sound artist, educator), Departamento de Arte Universidad de Los Andes, Carrera 1 No. 18-10, ocina S-201, Colombia. E-mail: <ricardarias@gmail. com>. See the Webliography at the end of this article for links to videos of works discussed here.

RODRIGO REsTREpO, CaRO ZORBaR aND LEONEL VsQUEz

The three artists whose work I present here belong to the second and third generational groups outlined above. I have chosen these particular artists, Rodrigo Restrepo (b. Bogot, 1977), Leonel Vsquez (Bogot, 1981) and caro Zorbar (Bogot, 1977), because each of them represents a distinct point in the continuum between music and sound art. Each of them also has a distinct approach to their use of technology and a very personal conception of space and time. Restrepo is a musician and composer by training but has gradually drifted away from conventional musical practices into hybrid, interdisciplinary ways of conceiving and presenting his work. Zorbar holds degrees in lm, television and ne arts and considers sound an important element among the many media he uses to realize his ideas. Leonel Vsquez, also an artist by training, has deliberately and decidedly chosen
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Fig. 1. Rodrigo Restrepo, Habitfono, Teatro Delia Zapata, Bogot, 2005. ( Rodrigo Restrepo)

presenting soundwas the Habitfono (Sound Room) (2005) (Fig. 1), a multitimbral instrument (a sound sculpture), a stage the size of a small room [11]. The experience of creating the Habitfono, says Restrepo, brought me ever closer, yet not fully consciously, to the realm of sound art, in which the spatial dimension of the work gains a greater importance in relation to its temporal dimension [12]. The space that Restrepo discovered in the realm of sound art was not the same loudspeaker space (or acousmatic, simulated space) that he had explored in his electroacoustic pieces. This new space is the actual space that the sculpture proposes in relation to the body of the performer. The experience of space facilitated by the Habitfono can be understood through Campesato, who cites Bleser and Salters four modes of experiencing space and posits them as appropriate for understanding the use of space in sound art:
One can experience space in four modes: social, as an arena for community cohesion; navigational, as local objects and geometries that combine into a spatial geometry; aesthetic, as an enhanced aesthetic texture; and musical, as an artistic extension of instruments [13].

to carry out his research projects and creative output through the medium of sound.

Toward the Sonorous: Rodrigo Restrepo

Restrepo views his own work as a wide, open-ended endeavor that goes beyond traditional ideas of music. In the early stages of his career, Restrepos practice with sound developed through two parallel paths: (1) his work in a traditional manner as a composer of tape pieces carefully crafted in the studio and resulting in fixed compositions meant for reproduction through loudspeakers (through his work with loudspeakers he became aware of the compositional importance of the spatial dimension of sound) and (2) his work in free improvisation, which afforded an opportunity to work directly with acoustic sound sources, exploring them in relation to his body and his physical gestures and not worrying as much about method or nal results. As he worked on these two musical practices, Restrepo gradually started to realize that music, or the musical, was but one aspect of a much wider universe that offered him even greater creative possibilities: that of sound, or the sonorous [9]. He thus came to an understanding of his work not just as music or art but in terms of the general attribute of creativity.
In trying to dene my work I have tended not to worry too much about the name or label I should assign to it. Musician, pro-

grammer, composer and artist are all incomplete and problematic terms. The same holds true for the terms used to describe particular works, such as sound art, music, performance, installation, or sculpture. Consequently I prefer to think of myself as someone who exercises his creativity, which is a factor common to all the categories just mentioned [10].

One of Restrepos works that rst signaled a shift away from traditional musical practicesor more generally away from a strictly performative mode of

Restrepo has continued to develop his work, taking advantage of the possibilities opened up to him by the notion of sound art and adopting the computer as his main technological aid. More recent works include interactive sculptural structures (Girfono, 2011) (Fig. 2) and interfaces for the performative control

Fig. 2. Rodrigo Restrepo, Girfono, Densidades: Arte Sonoro en Colombia exhibition, Universidad de Los Andes, Bogot, 2011. ( Rodrigo Restrepo)

42 Arias, Rakes, Live Deaths, Cassette Players

I love the idea of fragility. I think it is something that characterizes human nature. So I work with machines, sounds and projections, in circumstances that evoke interpersonal relations. I try to unfold and underscore the fragility inherent to certain interpersonal connections in which I nd a constant tension [18].

Fig. 3. caro Zorbar, Swan Lake (Assisted Installation #5), 2006. ( Icaro Zorbar)

of live audio signal processing (Raking, 2012) (see Webliography at the end of this article for video documentation of both of these pieces).

caro Zorbars Sentimental Machinery

caro Zorbar is, in his own words, a Colombian artist who works with machines, songs, sounds and projections [14]. From this short statement, it is clear that sound is a very important aspect of Zorbars work. He, however, does not think of himself as a sound artist: Sound always represents 50% of the work and the visual aspects (be they sculptural or videographic) the other 50% [15]. Most of his works are performative and have a nite, often narrative, temporality. Some of his works require his presence and his intervention in order to be activated. He calls them assisted installations. In Zorbars own words:
I have chosen to refer to some of my works, those which exhibit a particular temporal quality and that require my presence in order to function, as assisted installations. In these installations I have to pay close attention to things like the duration of a song, or I have to wind up a music box, nd the exact place where I have to drop the needle on a record, or change, rewind or thread a cassette tape [16].

acoustic amplification, and provides some further clues about various aspects of Zorbars work. The duration of the sound aspect of the work is determined by the time it takes the assistant to wind up all the music box mechanisms and the time it takes for them to unwind. In this case Zorbar uses mechanical, analog technology, which is a signature element of his artistic practice. Zorbar states: I like to discover how things work. In this respect, analog technology is more interesting to me because it is a technology the functioning of which can be discerned through simple observation [17]. Swan Lake is installed in a deliberately unpretentious, precarious and fragile manner. Fragility and its expression through a very particular use of analog machinery is yet another characteristic of Zorbars work and it is at the service of the artists ultimate expressive intentions.

Another work in the series of assisted installations, Ventilador (Ventilator) (Assisted Installation #6) (Fig. 4) (see Webliography), consists of a spatial arrangement of various elements: a loudspeaker, a swinging fan, a modied cassette player and an audio cassette. A nal aspect of Zorbars work is much more evident in this piece than in the previous one: The sound material, a song in this case, is crucial to the expressive effect of the installation. The character of the song is clearly pathological and acts as what Salom Voegelin has called sonic memory material [19], and it completes the sentimental character suggested by the fragility and instability expressed by the way the elements of the piece are arranged. The music acts as a pathetic trigger [20], accomplishing, in my view, a sentimental engagement on the part of the viewer.

Live Deaths and Silent Screams: Leonel Vsquez

Leonel Vsquez develops his creative process from the vantage point of doing and thinking with sound [21], and this process can take the form of sculptures, installations, sonic architectures, actions and videos [22]. His activities include teaching and researching, always in and around the experience of sound: I experiment with sound as a malleable material, as the form and content of sensory experience [23]. His work not only involves a critical reection on the technological means of sound production and reproduction but also places a great deal of emphasis on listening, not only as an instrument of perception but as a prob-

Fig. 4. caro Zorbar, Ventilador (Assisted Installation #6), 2007. ( Icaro Zorbar)

Swan Lake (Assisted Installation #5) from 2006 (Fig. 3) (see Webliography) is one such assisted installation consisting of a number of music box internal mechanisms placed over a speaker cabinet for

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Fig. 5. Leonel Vsquez, El Grito (The Scream), 2011. ( Leonel Vsquez)

lem of the relation between subjects, spaces, objects, and the environment in general [24]. His concern with the individual/personal and collective/social dimensions of sound makes Vsquezs work more political than that of Restrepo or Zorbar, without being simplistic or pamphleteering. His conception of sound involves the emotions, as does Zorbars, but is less concerned with the cultural representations of these emotions than with their experiencing and exteriorization. Vsquez conceives of sound and silence as manifestations of vital forces.
I am interested in thinking about the potentialities of sound to congure the expressive components of a space, of bodies, of a series of gestures, so as to attain the poetic conformation of a territory that invites us to experiment with

that which produces tears, screams, silences: human emotions [25].

El Grito (The Scream) (2011) is a sculptural piece, or rather a unique piece of furniture that expresses the artists concerns quite eloquently through an implied use of sound (the piece is silent). The object consists of a table that contains a naturally mummied body of a cat that cannot be clearly discerned through the opaque piece of glass used as the tabletop. There is a black structure attached to the table that invites the viewer to take a peek, at which point he/she is confronted with the cats face frozen in the midst of a terrifying cry (Fig. 5). Another piece from 2011 that contains strong affective elements and political connotations, titled Muertes Vivas (Live

Deaths), is an installation/action that takes place within a constructed acoustic space contained inside the gallery space [26]. The artist/performer activates with his breath and for a very long time an instrument that is at once a container (a box) and a ute. This box is lled with the bones of an unknown person or persons [27]. The realization of the piece takes the form of a performance that seeks, through this peculiar sound-producing object and its intensely focused and prolonged ritualistic performance, both to enact a symbolic reunication between the living and the anonymous dead and to provide the dead with a dignied and proper place of rest in the underworld [28] (Fig. 6) (see Webliography).

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CONCLUsION
The works of the three artists discussed here are not by any means representative of prevailing trends or styles in Colombian sound art. A wider survey reveals, as it does in most other parts of the world, a richly varied range of artistic approaches to sound. The three artists discussed use different and varied technologies according to the conceptual requirements of each particular work. Their technological choices and solutions are subservient to their ideas. Another interesting aspect of the works of Restrepo, Zorbar and Vsquez is the recurrent use of nite and performative strategies to present their pieces, even when they are conceived sculpturally or as installations: Restrepo builds and performs instrumental objects/ systems that are also sculptures or installations; Zorbar has coined the term assisted installations to refer to his hybrid performative constructions; and Vsquez speaks of installation/action when de-

scribing his piece Live Deaths. This is a peculiar trait if one considers that autonomous and continuous installations are often considered to be the clearest expression of sound art. Restrepos, Zorbars and Vsquezs works all conform to the canonical position that broadly denes sound art as closely related to installation art or to an expanded concept of sculpture [29] and at the same time counter this notions twin idea that sound art has been released from the traditional musical act of performing [30]. Mexican composer and sound artist Manuel Rocha Iturbide ascribes a slightly more inclusive eld of activity to sound art, which might be well suited to characterize the artists discussed here, when he states that, for him, sound art refers to, above all: sound sculpture, sound installation, and intermedia works in which sound is the main element (excluding dance and theater) such as sound performance [31]. In short, the artists presented in this essay are producing sound artworks that stem from very idiosyncratic concerns,

in ways that do not conform strictly to canonical forms of the practice. Whether this is a particularity of sound art made in Colombia or, more broadly, in Latin America is yet to be explored. References and Notes
1. Christoph Cox, Sound Art and the Sonic Unconscious, Organised Sound 14 (2009) pp. 1926. 2. Daniela Cascella, Watch This Sound (2007): <www.contemporary-magazines.com/profile91_1. htm> (Retrieved 20 December 2012). 3. Sound is rapidly gaining importance for instance in anthropology. See Louise Mentjes, Ana Mara Ochoa, Thomas Porcello and David W. Samuels, Soundscapes: Toward an Sounded Anthropology, The Annual Review of Anthropology 38 (2010) pp. 329 345: <www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/an nurev-anthro-022510-132230?journalCode=anthro> (Retrieved 15 December 2012). See also Sound Studies, an interdisciplinary eld of study in the human sciences: Jonathan Sterne, ed., The Sound Studies Reader (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012). 4. Most of the literature that is taken into account in the discussion about the denition and history of sound art often fails to include references to work, both artistic and scholarly, originating in the rest of the world. It is telling, for example, that Engstrm and Stjerna, in their efforts to attain an understanding for how cultural discourses are created and through this obtain perspectives on how artistic elds

Fig. 6. Leonel Vsquez, Muertes Vivas (Live Deaths), 2011. ( Leonel Vsquez)

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of activities are dened depending on academic traditions and spheres of written media neglected to include the Spanish language (or Chinese, for that matter) in their search for the phrase sound art. See Andreas Engstrm and sa Stjerna, Sound Art or Klangkunst? A Reading of the German and English Literature on Sound Art, Organised Sound 14 (2009) pp. 1118. 5. In the past 2 years alone there have been at least three major sound art exhibitions and a series of smaller shows exclusively featuring Colombian artists. The following is a partial list of events that took place mostly in Bogot (there has been a great deal of sound art activity in Medelln as well): In June 2010, LA Galera presented a show entitled Dropouts, featuring sound works by Juan Reyes and Leonel Vsquez <www.la-galeria.com.co/exposicio nes/dropouts/index.html>; in September 2010, two major exhibitions took place that surveyed the current state of sound art in Colombia: Sonare: Arte Sonoro, curated by Mauricio Bejarano and presented by MAMBO (Bogot Museum of Modern Art), exhibited sound installations and sculptures by 14 artists, while Vociferous: Sound Works by 21 Contemporary Colombian Artists, which I curated and which was presented by Diapason in Brooklyn, NY, featured mostly multichannel sound pieces: <www. diapasongallery.org/recent_installations.html>. In 2011 I curated Densidades: Arte Sonoro en Colombia, presented at the Julio Mario Santo Domingo exhibition space at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogot and including sound installations and sculptures (both sonorous and silent), videos and acousmatic pieces by 31 Colombian artists. More recently, in August and September 2012, Mauricio Bejarano curated a smaller exhibition at Espacio Alterno Gallery in Bogot, entitled Obras Blancas, silencios elocuentes, featuring sound objects by seven artists. 6. In my 1998 essay From the Margins of the Periphery: Music and Technology at the Outskirts of the WestA Personal View, I referred to this generation of artists simply as electronic or electroacoustic musicians and did not even consider labeling them as sound artists. See Ricardo Arias, From the Margins of the Periphery: Music and Technology at the Outskirts of the WestA Personal View, Leonardo Music Journal 8 (1998) pp. 4954. 7. These are the artists from the transitional generation that Australian composer Chris Mann possibly had in mind when he said, in response to N.B. Aldrichs question What is sound art?: I always thought sound art was a career move . . . a branding exercise. See N.B. Aldrich, What is Sound Art?

(2003): <www.emf.org/emnstitute/aldrich/mann. html> (Retrieved 20 December 2012). 8. At its best, sound art opens up or calls attention to an auditory unconscious, a transcendental or virtual domain of sound that has steadily come to prominence over the course of the twentieth century. In contrast with music, speech and signal, I will call this domain noise, though we will see that the reach of this term extends far beyond that of its ordinary usage. Christoph Cox, Sound Art and the Sonic Unconscious, Organised Sound 14 (2009) p. 19. 9. Personal communication with the author, 21 December 2012. 10. See [9]. 11. See [9]. 12. See [9]. 13. Lilian Campesato, A Metamorphosis of the Muses: Referential and Contextual Aspects in Sound Art, Organised Sound 14 (2009) p. 30. 14. From caro Zorbars web site: <icarozorbar.com/ bio>. 15. Personal communication with the author, 28 December 2012. 16. Document from an exhibition of Zorbars work at Lugar a Dudas gallery in Cali, Colombia, August September 2011: <www.lugaradudas.org/publicacio nes/la.../icaro_zorbar.pdf> (Retrieved 15 December 2012, authors translation). 17. See [16]. 18. See [16]. 19. Salom Voegelin, Sonic Memory Material as Pathetic Trigger, Organised Sound 11 (2006) pp. 1318. 20. Voegelin [19]. 21. Personal communication with the author, 29 December 2012. 22. See [21]. 23. See [21]. 24. See [21]. 25. See [21]. 26. See [21].

27. The bones were found in the cemetery of a neuropsychiatric hospital in Vsquezs home town of Sibat, Colombia. There is a mass grave in this cemetery containing the rest of the hospitals deceased patients, the contents of which are in the open air (personal communication with the author, 29 December 2012). This gruesome circumstantial detail is meaningful in the Colombian context in at least two ways: On the one hand it gives a clue as to how life lost value at certain times and places in this society; and it is an indirect but evident reference to the many mass graves that have appeared throughout the country in the course of the armed conict that has steadily unfolded for at least the past 60 years. 28. See also Leonel Vsquez, Muertes Vivas: sobre los cuerpos vivos y muertos que no se dejan morir, Masters Thesis, 2010; published on-line at: <leon elvasquez.blogspot.com/2010/06/muertes-vivas. html> (Retrieved 18 May 2013). 29. Engstrm and Stjerna [4]. 30. Engstrm and Stjerna [4]. 31. El arte sonoro es sobre todo: escultura sonora, instalacin sonora y obras intermedia en las que el sonido es el elemento principal (que no sean danza ni teatro), como en el performance sonoro (my translation). Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Qu es el arte sonoro?: <www.artesonoro.net/soundartwri tings.html> (accessed 18 May 2013).

Webliography
Rodrigo Restrepo, Girfono (2011), <vimeo.com/ 69818477>. Rodrigo Restrepo, Raking (2011): <vimeo.com/ 56924647>. caro Zorbar, Swan Lake (Assisted Installation #5) (2006): <www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTNUT2baTTE>. caro Zorbar, Ventilador (Assisted Installation #6): <www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-muCky6y7k>. Leonel Vsquez, Muertes Vivas (Live Deaths): (2011) <vimeo.com/21234956>. Manuscript received 2 January 2013.

Ricardo Arias is an experimental musician, sound artist, teacher, researcher and curator. He is currently based in Bogot, where he is Associate Professor in the Art Department at Universidad de Los Andes.

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